OMG people. We get to vote on daylight savings time.

Very patchy this year.

The sun right now is making everything look very severe. I'm not sure how much more of this you will get because the vineyards are looking really rough. It's the 5th and there is no rain in sight. It isn't uncommon to not get rain until Halloween, but we've reached the stage where every conversation turns to the weather. It is deeply, deeply dry. Even the brown earth starts to turn a really weird color.

A couple of days ago I was talking to a guy. He's like - when I was growing up we had clouds.

Me - I know! Remember rainbows? Now they are really rare.

Him - Now the sky is just white all the time. Did we break the sky?

Me - I love that. Can I steal it?

Him - Sure!

and now it's here on my blog.

NPC's showing up in real life.

Keeping it 100.

This morning there was a huge crash on 880 in Oakland that closed the freeway. The girl crashed into an under construction overpass while DUI doing 100 MPH.

Me - That's so crazy to be doing 100 through Oakland.

Him - I know, and that's not even in the middle of nowhere. And this is coming from the queen of 100. The girl who thinks "keeping it 100" means something different than what everybody else does.

Now he wants to get me a t-shirt that says that. But it's not going to mean the thing everyone thinks.

In January I will be 2/3'ds of the way through my ticket restriction.

In Flat.

Halloween really cut into my project time, so I'm giving you a photo of the solstice being painted. When the bumper got dented last time we'd discussed having the whole car painted because we didn't think they could blend the old paint with the new that well.  The car is more than 10 years old. I'm sure they would do a fair job. But we decided that it cost too much for the car to be worth it.

When the repair shop sent this photo of the car before the gloss coat I seriously considered telling them to stop.

If that would have matched the inside - I would have left it flat like this. Also, I thought some of those really low profile camera mirrors that concepts have, would look neat on this car. In this shot the mirrors are off, and it wasn't until I saw it this way that I realized the mirrors interrupted the lines. I almost wish it didn't need mirrors. The solstice doesn't have any tech at all, so you couldn't really use camera mirrors.  But I like it so much without them.

I think that would be a cool new car trend. Retrofitting those super thin hyper car type mirrors on regular cars.

Surprise!

They saved her. I've been dying to talk about this for weeks, but I'm not one to count my chickens before they are parked in my driveway. I honestly didn't think insurance ever really fixed your stuff. I thought you just paid and paid, and when something bad happened they were just like - sue us. But it wasn't my insurance who paid, so maybe they get way stabbier when someone else is paying.

So, last time we talked - the body shop said they had reached the point where they had to stop taking the car apart, and it was going to be totaled. Then, somehow, insurance wound up kicking in another grand and the car managed to ~just~ squeak under the limit. There was no frame damage. It was all exterior cosmetic stuff.

This car was so close to being totaled that when the first insurance adjuster went on vacation the guy who took his place just started kicking out docusigns totaling the car. I think it was a flip of the coin and 200 bucks! But the strange thing was they'd already okayed the repairs, and the payout for totaling the car was actually more than the repair. The payout was around 10 grand, and the repair was 7200 and change.

Everything needed replacing except the doors and the trunk hood. And... it took FOUR engine hoods to repair this car. They got the first three and they were too damaged for the repair shop to repair. Each hood took a week to get in. Finally they had to get a hood from Canada.

Obviously the car was going to look weird with just a couple of parts not repainted, but we took the money from when he got hit last time and had the doors and trunk painted. So the car has pretty much a completely new paint job. We kicked in three grand for the extra paint. It basically took two accidents to get a completely new paint job.

All I know is that I've never felt such affection for a car. The whole experience really surprised me. I didn't know I felt that way! Especially because I think this car was the last in the era before touch screens and modern tech. Which I love, but this car doesn't have any of that - and I didn't think I'd be happy with an old timey car. Who doesn't love new tech?

Next year I'm going to look into getting the soft top replaced because it's still pretty sun damaged.

Real Estate says the market is lying.

Home flippers are fleeing the market as their profits shrink.

"In California, where home prices are highest, flips were down a steeper 22 percent annually."

Remember a few days ago I said home improvement would be next? Well, we now have a very predictable acceleration in a series of negative feedback loops.

Houses in which you do not live in are a full percentage point higher in interest. So, if rates are at 5%, someone flipping a house is paying 6%. Houses are sitting way too long now. It isn't uncommon to see things in the four month range, and lots are in the 1/3 of a year range. 100-200 days. I think the article says the average now is 186 days. And you can sort of see this coming through. A couple of weeks ago I saw a house that was bought, and then they stuck it right back on the market for like 20 grand more. Now it's been sitting for months.

Now, flippers have a bad name even thought they do an important service, so probably no one cares but the real estate figures for the Bay Area came in yesterday I think, and they were worse than Southern California.

Amid surge in inventory, Bay Area home prices rise more modestly.

"Throughout the Bay Area, new listings, active listings and price reductions all surged last month year over year, said Patrick Carlisle, chief market analyst with the Compass real estate brokerage.

The change was most striking in Santa Clara County, which had been one of the nation’s hottest markets for most of this year. There, new listings of existing, single-family homes were up 83 percent year over year in September, active listings were up 120 percent and the number of homes with price reductions was up 308 percent, Carlisle said.

In San Francisco, the comparable numbers were 28, 8 and 32 percent."

Santa Clara has had an incredible transformation in the past few years. More than any other city. But they are getting ready to open some massive housing developments. And tech stocks are way down.

Pumpkin pro tip.

White pumpkins rot at a faster rate than regular pumpkins. Last night one of my eyes was crying. Which is odd because the both eyes came from the same pumpkin.

We just have to cancel Halloween for next year because obviously three days is your pumpkin maximum.

Go on with your bad self San Fransisco.

"San Francisco leaders hate Trump enough they voted to limit the city’s water rather than do this".

For months, San Francisco, a hotbed of anti-Donald Trump sentiment, has found itself in the awkward position of being aligned with his administration over California water policy.
On Tuesday, the city’s leaders said the alliance was unbearable.

In an 11-0 vote, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors agreed in a resolution to support the State Water Resources Control Board’s proposal to leave more water in the San Joaquin River and its tributaries to benefit struggling fish populations. The supervisors’ vote is subject to veto by Mayor London Breed, although the board could override the veto.

The vote splits the city from the Trump administration and instead moves its support to a state plan that its utilities commission warns could lead to severe drinking water shortages for its nearly 884,000 residents.

The resolution explicitly says the city must divorce itself from the Trump administration and its congressional allies such as Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Turlock, who’s branded the state plan a “water grab.” The Trump administration has vowed to sue the state if the so-called Bay-Delta plan goes forward, saying it would interfere with the operation of key reservoirs owned by the federal government in the San Joaquin Valley.

“Under the cloud of climate change denial and anti-science populism, the debate around the Bay-Delta Plan has transcended the realm of rational, environmental discourse toward a political and populist, anti-conservation rally cry, fueled by the strategic lobbying of a federal Republican administration aiming to destabilize California’s status as a Democratic stronghold,” the resolution says."

Some things in California are just sorta going off the rails right now. Seriously - like two days ago there was a commercial for a democrat who was trying to align himself with Trump policies, but claim they were not Trump policies. When they clearly are. I was like - what the eff just happened?

Man this guy is tap dancing on the rattle snakes den.

Musk buys $10 million in Tesla stock and plans to buy $20 million more.

I am somewhat bored of Elon.  But it doesn't escape me that everyone is getting crushed by higher interest rates - except Tesla apparently!

I read somewhere a long time ago that China accounted for 17% of Tesla sales. I didn't fact check it, so I might just be making shit up. But China is hurting a lot of people right now too. Except Tesla apparently.

Let him buy all the shares! I mean, Far Away Future just declared they were insolvent. So.... lets see where this goes.

At least I got to see them once.

Holy crap - that's a lot of percent.

Southern California suffers its worst housing slump in over a decade.

"The number of new and existing houses and condominiums sold during the month plummeted nearly 18 percent compared with September 2017, according to CoreLogic."

The wealth effect is real, and we are in a really bad feedback loop right now. And there are many negatives for which Silicon Valley will amplify.

For example - there are quite lot of people who are sitting on underwater RSU's now. (Restricted stock units. ) This is how Silicon Valley compensates people outside of your salary.

I haven't checked today, but when companies are down say........ 30% like Facebook and Amazon and Nvidia, you are not thinking about buying a house. You feel much poorer even if it was paper money. And if houses aren't moving very fast.... it sort of makes your butt cheeks tighten. Home improvement will be next.

The Turpumpkin.

This might be one of the hardest pumpkin projects we've done and we didn't intend it to be that way. We thought this would be a relatively easy thing to do. Just put one pumpkin inside of another. Right? Yeah, not so much.

I mean, we've done pacman pumpkins and that was not harder than this. We've done South Park pumpkins. Also not harder.  Evil clown pumpkin was pretty challenging and might be my favorite. One of the neighbors said they had to cover it up so their kid could come up to the house. Evil Pumpkin snowman seems to garner the most hits though. Oh! I forgot about zombie pumpkins with candy corn for teeth.

Anyway. There was a point where both of us didn't think we would get this to work at all. There is way more shaping than you would expect. WAY MORE SHAPING. Like cake boss level crap.



This is the point where we thought these looked like boobs, and had an inappropriately long conversation about nipple size. I mean Iris size.



Dry fitting the inner pumpkin.





Pro tip. All of this was made a lot easier with a sawsall. It's the great pumpkin equalizer.

Halloween light crawl.

I'm not crazy about my shots. But, Monday night light crawl is what it is. None of us seem to be that in to it this year.

More of this.

It's been overcast lately so the colors aren't popping yet. But this is the time of year you have to drive by every day because a good wind storm can make it all go away. Probably not the top shot, but some stuff in the bottom shot is looking pretty ragged this year.

It NOT social media's job to spot warning signs.

It's law enforcements job. I thought threatening someones life was a crime - everywhere. Yet day after day people get death threats over the internet.

If they can have the pedo police - they can have a division that just talks to people about the death threats. And they should get fined or something. It isn't like every flavor of law enforcement isn't on the net. If you have the right post, you will see every division represented.

We need to make examples of a few people to tone down poor impulse control that seems rampant right now. It's not okay to threaten people. You couldn't do that in real life, and the rules should be the same for the net.

This doesn't take away anyones free speech because what they are doing is already a crime.

At the Snarkolepsy household we get easily distracted.

I am suppose to be doing projects. But you can't, not, stop when you see this right? I completely sidled into some guy's car glamor shoot. I'm not sure why he was doing it in this lot. I would have had him out by the vineyards.

I am sorta bored with orange McLarens though.

How would you glue two pumpkins together?

I'm not sure what you are going to get this weekend because I need to complete a few projects to achieve my winter goals. Which basically involves a lot of drinking by the fire in sippy cups, home made candied nuts and fancy cheese. And possibly a lot of bad movies.

It's funny - every time this cheese trend has come around I haven't been into it. This time I'm way into it.

At least that migrant invasion is distracting people from this.

AMZN: -19%
C: -21%
BAC: -21%
T: -23%
INTC: -26%
NFLX: -29%
NVDA: -32%
FB: -33%
BABA: -34%
TWTR: -42%

Blackrock - those people who own all the real estate? In January it was at 590.26. NOW? 391.96.

China and South Korea both down 30% aprox.

Almost everything that I've looked at that got a Trump relief rally, is back to what is was in January.

I bought something from the internet this morning and when I was checking out I noticed they had an option to pay with TWO credit cards.

That doesn't make you feel like we are leveraged to the hilt at all.

That's what I said.

A while back I was saying that one day we'd find out that Uber and Lyft didn't take any cars off the road at all. And now the University of Chicago has done a study which basically says the same.

Just sit in traffic and look at all the Ubers and Lyfts. It isn't rocket science.

"The costs are significant: Cities with high Uber and Lyft usage had more pedestrian deaths, more traffic deaths at night, more traffic deaths on weekends and more traffic deaths overall than the trend would have predicted, compared to other cities. Even drunk driving deaths were essentially unchanged by the presence of Uber and Lyft, Barrios and his team found. 

On total car ownership, more bad news. Cities with high Uber and Lyft activity actually had 3 percent higher new vehicle registrations (see this for New York City’s experience). Uber and Lyft might discourage car ownership among some higher-income riders, but app-based taxis seem to induce more car buying among lower-income people that work as drivers, Barrios found. 

As Streetsblog reported, Uber and Lyft increase congestion partly because drivers spend 40 to 60 percent of their time circling without passengers, also known as “deadheading.” Barrios and his team said, Uber and Lyft’s policies make the problem worse."

Emphasis mine. Source.

All hail the robot arm!

It's the sound of one arm clapping.

Oooh scary job taking robots!

This robot was testing boards. Something that would be a life sucking job for a human. Hunched over all day doing exactly the same thing. We can all agree a robot is better suited for this job. Right?



I told Mr S. a couple of days ago that if I went to my next conference and it was all arms - it will make me want to punch the sky. Because I'm super bored of arms. Mr S. thought I should get a robot to do that, because that is what they are here for.

But, they were able to sufficiently distract me with lasers. And I'm still into that. Apparently pointing lasers over objects make imperfections really noticeable. So the above arm was inspecting this object for imperfections.



I also wanted to get a few shots of the types of power these things need.



The old ABB was back sorting toys with a sucker. But you are going to need to add an air compressor for that as well. Hopefully a quiet one.

Nihlyst's unite.

Today I was trying to drown out the world with the stereo on 11 and I thought I heard a honk. So I look to my right and this guy is smiling at me. Like a lot. So I smile back and I can see he is reaching for his window button. So - I roll down my passenger side window.

He says - I like your plate.

Which really made me happy because this is the first thing anyone has said about it. I was sort of nervous of the response I would get. I also figured most people didn't even know what it meant and hoped I be safe with that. I think the small portion of people who get it will think it's funny.

You are going to get about a week of this.

This is the time of year my city really becomes beautiful after months and months of nothing but brown town. We get a splash of color. Then in a few months it turns into green acres.

It's still a bit early, but I have to start taking shots now because one good wind storm can screw everything up. And these shots aren't great yet... but I couldn't get out there in the morning so the sun was against me.

It's kinda of a nice hidden secret we have, because you can't see these areas from the freeways. I bet a ton of people who live around here don't even know it gets so pretty.

We should just move all of our homeless camps right next to the border. That way when the illegals get here they might just turn right around. Our homeless problem is seriously third world. And those people trying to make it to the border look way cleaner than most of the homeless I see. And wait till they find out they have to house 50 of them in a Tuff Shed because housing so expensive.

Far away future.

Faraday Future confirms layoffs and wage cuts as struggles continue.

Mr S. had taken to calling this company Far Away Future for the past few months. Which always made me laugh.

Sometimes I scare myself.

I was reading Zero Hedge today where he talks about how the Khashoggi killing could blow up Softbank. Which made me laugh because a few months ago I'd made a post basically saying that nothing better happen to SoftBank or The Valley would be screwed.

When they started taking a stake in companies like Nvidia I started getting nervous. Because why would Nvidia need their money anyway?

So I had to find my post so I could make sure of what I said because it was months ago. And OH MY GAWD. I had to laugh  so hard. This is my post in it's entirety written on April 25th 2018.

"WeWork documents reveal it owes $18 billion in rent and is burning through cash as it seeks more funding. "

I've been completely fascinated by these "incubators". They don't seem to be producing much. Yet I see one site in Fremont that is basically vacant and just storing cars in the parking lot. I've been meaning to go and check it out more closely. They seem to be a direct to customer used car company that I haven't heard of before and forget the name of. But every time I drive by there - there seems to be more and more cars. I just don't get it. 

All I know if that if something happens to Softbank the Valley is going to be a little screwed. They own a little of everything around here." Original here.

I just didn't think things would blow up this way. But that's the funny thing about life.